NVIDIA shook the high-end PC hardware industry earlier this month with the surprise launch of its GeForce GTX 580 graphics card, which extended the lead for single-GPU performance NVIDIA has been holding. It also managed to come up with some great performance per Watt improvements over the previous generation. The reference design board, however, made use of a clock speed throttling logic which reduced clock speeds when an extremely demanding 3D application such as Furmark or OCCT is run. While this is a novel way to protect components saving consumers from potentially permanent damage to the hardware, it does come as a gripe to expert users, enthusiasts and overclockers, who know what they're doing.

GPU-Z developer and our boss W1zzard has devised a way to make disabling this protection accessible to everyone (who knows what he's dealing with), and came up with a nifty new feature for GPU-Z, our popular GPU diagnostics and monitoring utility, that can disable the speed throttling mechanism. It is a new command-line argument for GPU-Z, that's "/GTX580OCP". Start the GPU-Z executable (within Windows, using Command Prompt or shortcut), using that argument, and it will disable the clock speed throttling mechanism. For example, "X:\gpuz.exe /GTX580OCP" It will stay disabled for the remainder of the session, you can close GPU-Z. It will be enabled again on the next boot.

As an obligatory caution, be sure you know what you're doing. TechPowerUp is not responsible for any damage caused to your hardware by disabling that mechanism. Running the graphics card outside of its power specifications may result in damage to the card or motherboard. We have a test build of GPU-Z (which otherwise carries the same-exact feature-set of GPU-Z 0.4.8). We also ran a power consumption test on our GeForce GTX 580 card demonstrating how disabling that logic affects power consumption.

However, as the throttling is designed to prevent hardware damage to card and mobo, how is this going to be prevented when the card is run past its limit?

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I would assume it's up to the "expert users, enthusiasts and overclockers" to monitor these things if they are going to do this. If you disable throttling you should know the risks. Temperature throttling is most likely still in place. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

I would assume it's up to the use to monitor these things if they are going to do this. If you disable throttling you should know the risks. Temperature throttling is most likely still in place. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

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+1

All hand holding is disabled once you cross that line, choose the option and take the big boy route and expect the take on the consequences head-on. Don't expect to point fingers when you smoke your card using this to remove throttling...taking ownership of success along with mistakes is required by the owner of said product.

I am curious to see more about these cards de-throttled, how hot they get, how long they last, etc.

I would assume it's up to the "expert users, enthusiasts and overclockers" to monitor these things if they are going to do this. If you disable throttling you should know the risks. Temperature throttling is most likely still in place. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

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I really dunno the answer to this one, erocker. By the sound of it, it's not just temperature damage that's the problem. If excess current is running through the card and/or mobo, then damage can result if it can't take it, regardless of how well temperature is kept down.

I can see lots of card RMAs going back, all with suspiciously similar faults to the power circuitry, or whatever and the user denying all knowledge of disabling the failsafe.

I reckon a mini review by W1zzard on how to do this properly would really help us enthusiasts to minimize the risk.

I really dunno the answer to this one, erocker. By the sound of it, it's not just temperature damage that's the problem. If excess current is running through the card and/or mobo, then damage can result if it can't take it, regardless of how well temperature is kept down.

I can see lots of card RMAs going back, all with suspiciously similar faults to the power circuitry, or whatever and the user denying all knowledge of disabling the failsafe.

I reckon a mini review by W1zzard on how to do this properly would really help us enthusiasts to minimize the risk.

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Really though, it just comes down to the same thing as overclocking anything else in your system. Watch temps, voltage, etc. Nothing new.

this should not affect temperature protection, which will remain at 97°C

it won't. just as much as any card other than gtx 580 does not have this kind of protection either

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True, but no other previous cards have used as much power as the 480 & 580, which makes a burnout more likely.

And it looks like it could take out other parts of the PC with it, which was very unlikely previously.

You know what this all looks like to me? We're hitting another performance bottleneck due to excessive power use. This happened a few years ago with CPUs, preventing clock speed from reaching ever higher and this is looking like the same thing.

This new card is what, 15-30% faster than the old one? I'll bet the new ATI card will be faster than it's predecessor by a similar amount, all due to this unfortunate limit. The fact that these cards have to fit within a particular physical form factor and power usage envelope won't help either.

I reckon the days of next gen cards doubling in power over their predecessors are over.

Seems like today's standards are high temps and watts, if so i want nothing to do with it. Full load on GTX 460 = 65-70c I'm a little disappointed with, when i see high end cards doing under 40c full load call me impressed.

True, but no other previous cards have used as much power as the 480 & 580, which makes a burnout more likely.

And it looks like it could take out other parts of the PC with it, which was very unlikely previously.

You know what this all looks like to me? We're hitting another performance bottleneck due to excessive power use. This happened a few years ago with CPUs, preventing clock speed from reaching ever higher and this is looking like the same thing.

This new card is what, 15-30% faster than the old one? I'll bet the new ATI card will be faster than it's predecessor by a similar amount, all due to this unfortunate limit. The fact that these cards have to fit within a particular physical form factor and power usage envelope won't help either.

I reckon the days of next gen cards doubling in power over their predecessors are over.

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thats why right now ati focus on multi GPU scaling with their dual GPU card to achieve higher performance while can make entire line up much faster, and i hope with 28nm they can enable that side port thing,

thats why right now ati focus on multi GPU scaling with their dual GPU card to achieve higher performance while can make entire line up much faster, and i hope with 28nm they can enable that side port thing,